Indonesia and the EU held on Wednesday the first Working Group on Environment and Climate Change (WGECC) meeting, an ad-hoc group set up by the EU-Indonesia Partnership and Cooperation during a meeting in Brussels, Belgium, in November 2016.
The meeting discussed key issues where the EU and Indonesia share common interests, such as climate change, biodiversity and the green economy. European Commissioner for Environment, Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Karmenu Vella said the cooperation between the EU and Indonesia had resulted in some positive things for both sides, such as the Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) scheme.
A FLEGT license guarantees that timber has been harvested, processed and exported in accordance with national laws. Indonesia is the first exporting country to mandate that its timber exports comply with certain legal requirements. The FLEGT license is, in effect, a regulatory approach to suppressing illegal logging.